The Job
by Scouse
Summary: [COMPLETED] What if 'Chronicles' never happened? Jack never became Kyra but she did get sent to a triple-max prison...just not the one you think! Rated mainly for language coz we all know Riddick has a bad mouth! Please read and review!
1. The Job part 1

Just a little sommat I cooked up while trying to rid myself of a terrible case of writer's block on my Fast and the Furious fic. Damn stupid writer's block, and not only that I now have animator's block as well! I'm so gonna fail university! Oh well, this kinda helped me to work some of it away, but be gentle, it's my first pitch black fic. The story takes place as if CoR never happened. Hope you like and please feel free to tell me exactly what you think! Okay. Thankies for taking the time to read this if you are, I'm not sure when the final part will be up but it's not gonna take too long!

Well, happy reading I guess. I won't do a summary coz it'll spoil it!

Thankies!

Gem

xxx

The Job (part 1).

She thumbed on her lighter causing a brief amber flash to play across her young face as she lit the cigarette that she held firmly between her lips…and then darkness resumed it's reign. She took a long, deep drag of it's toxic breath and held it inside her for an extended heartbeat, ensuring that all the nicotine possible could filter into her blood stream and cure the craving, if only for a little while. Then she blew the bluish smoke out in a jet of hot air before giving the cigarette a firm tap, scattering ash across the table that she knew was before her.

She sat in the dark. In the pitch blackness of her cell, waiting for them to send her next kill to her.

Back when she had been a newbie in the Slam, barely 14 years old, they had tried to take her, to use her for their pleasure. She had X-ed out seven guards that day. _Seven_. And with nought for a weapon save her bootlaces. She smirked remembering the fray, rewarding herself extra points for…_creativity_. Then the Slam Boss had recognised her potential and cut her in on a little deal he had going. The guards would leave her pretty much alone if she disposed of the inmates that got onto the Boss' wrong side and the prison workers and officials that got in his way. She had agreed. No question. Sure, she could've handled the guards but at least being on the Boss' 'unofficial' workforce she didn't have to sleep with her eyes open all the time. And she got certain privileges such as the smoke that she was enjoying at that moment.

Unusually she knew who her next kill was. She'd known from the moment she'd heard the rumours flying around the cellblocks, food hall and the recreation areas. None of the conversations were directed at her though. Very few ever were. The inmates had learned to stay away from Jack B. Badd on that first day that she had been imprisoned. But she heard the whispers none-the-less and she had revelled in the knowledge that her next kill, her new job, was to ghost the very man who had abandoned her to this fate those five years ago when she had been the tender age of 14. The man who the Boss considered a liability and more trouble than he was worth. He'd already broken out of the prison before so God only knew why they were bringing him back again! Butcher's Bay was allegedly the best triple-max prison that there was in the universe but it had been a simple stepping stone on her new job's way through the many galaxies. He'd escaped from countless other smaller double and single-max prisons without so much as a single misstep along the way which was probably one of the reasons that he found it so easy to _'do'_ Butcher's Bay. He'd had _lots_ of practice. Seemed that no-where could hold him and both Jack and the Boss knew that a second time in Butcher's Bay would be no different. She'd have put money on him being there no longer than 48 hours max…that was if _she_ hadn't been given the task of making sure he never broke out of anywhere ever again. Sure, security had been quadrupled since the last time he had graced the cells but to someone like Richard B. Riddick that was merely a minor discrepancy.

The Boss had come to her with her new job a full 24 hours after the rumours had started tearing around the cells like wildfire and as with all the others, she simply nodded and told him that her cell door would be open. Welcome to my parlour said the spider to the fly…

That's where she was sat. In the shadows so thick that a normal person would be able to see nothing. However, she saw everything, even if it was in shades of silver and purple. The bright glow from the end of her lit cigarette stabbed into her shined eyes with an almost painful twinge. She could even see the faint wisps of smoke that curled from her lips as clearly as if it were daylight.

She'd sought out the 'doctor', the one that the gossipmongers called Pope Joe, the instant that she had been let out of solitary confinement after her little killing spree. Deep in the bowels of the prison she found him after forcing her way down into the service hatches and following the sewer pipes. The only reason that she had survived so long down in the underbelly of Butcher's Bay was because of her quick mind. Otherwise she would have died with the horrors down there. Perhaps a little of her did. She never spoke of it, though there was very few who she spoke to and even fewer who dared to ask. Pope Joe had agreed to perform his operation on her with little need of the forceful persuasion that she had been lead to believe was necessary. Twenty Menthol-Cools her ass! All he had asked for was that she fix his beloved 'voice-box', an ancient contraption that played music from small, circular silver plates which he called 'CD's'. Jack had gone to town and modified it so that Joe could pick up the laser-impulses that were sent universe wide to be picked up by all ship computers to entertain the crew with the latest popular music and idle gossip. She had often gone down to see Pope Joe before the Boss had decided to move her to the triple-max section of Butcher's Bay where he had some…_pressing business_ for her to take care of. Pope Joe had been one of the few people that she had trusted and she had missed him terribly when they had moved her. At the age of 16 they had tossed her into the ring with the 'big boys'…and she'd had them all wrapped around her thin, scarred, lethal little fingers within a matter of days.

Suddenly, the stale air shifted slightly, barely a breeze against her cheek and though he stood behind her where her darkness-invading gaze could not see him, she knew he was there. She could feel the two luminous silver irises that mirrored her own boring a hole into the back of her head and she smiled to herself, taking another deep draw on her cigarette, placing her shiv down on the table and spinning it with her free hand.

"Hello…Riddick." She sneered, smoke curling from her lips as she spoke his name.

In a soundless flash that would have been easily missed in a blink of her eyelid, he had moved around the table into her view and stabbed his own shiv point down between her moving, slender fingers, ceasing the blade's spinning and pinning her hand palm down. Jack didn't even blink.

"I told you to stay with Imam!" his deep voice came out as an animalistic growl that caused her smirk to broaden as she glanced up and saw him in the glowing tints and tones that he must see. Sleek, silver, mercury. He was beautiful, even more so than she remembered but a little part of her heart tugged with remorse at not being able to see the deep, warm bronze colour of his skin. Jack stamped that thought down almost before it had a chance to blossom into being and instead continued by giving a blasé shrug, withdrawing her hand from the deeply embedded shiv to suck at the drop of blood that jewelled the skin where he had nicked her.

"You're getting sloppy, Riddick." She taunted in a mocking tone, ripping the shiv from the table, eliciting a great crack of protest from the wood. She placed the blade down beside her own and leaned her meagre weight upon the table, taking another puff of fumes. Her gleaming eyes locked with his.

"I told you to stay in New Mecca!" Riddick repeated, fury tainting his growl this time and she gave an exaggerated sigh, rocking her chair back on two legs and folding her arms behind her head flicking ash from her cigarette behind her.

"There was nothing to hold me there." She replied, her voice defiant. "The only thing that kept me in one place for longer than a few days left after a couple of months." She took a final drag on the stump of a smoke left in between her fingers and then stubbed it out on the bare wood of the table.

His laughter barked out around the cell but it held little amusement, if any.

"You're blaming me for your problems, Jack?" he scoffed. "I saved your lily-ass!"

It was Jack's turn to laugh. A cold, bitter sound.

"And that gives you some sort of control over me!" she snorted. "Shit, Riddick, you're denser than I thought!"

His hand shot out of the darkness, snatching up his shiv but Jack was quicker, stabbing her blade between his moving fingers, mimicking his earlier manoeuvre. She shook her head and clicked her tongue in mocking admonishment.

"Like I said, Riddick. Sloppy, very sloppy!" she sneered and his silvery eyes flashed dangerously. She knew that she was playing with fire…and as it happened, she enjoyed the burn!

_And it burns, burns, burns, Ring of fire! _She sang to herself in her head, allowing her smirk to widen.

"Cocky, Jack. Very cocky!" he imitated before leaning towards her slightly so that his face filled her shined view. "I've been hearin' a lot about you, Jack. They been sayin' that you're the next big thing. Bigger than me even!"

"Maybe I am." She bit back, barely after that last word had left his lips. Her eyes burned platinum fire with challenge.

"You wanna test that theory, Jackie-girl? 'Cause you're startin' to try my patience."

Jack gave another smirk that bordered on the offensive before kicking her feet to rest atop the table between them. She crossed her legs at the ankles and returned her arms to fold behind her head. She remained silent for several long minutes simply matching Riddick's invasive stare with one of her own. Finally she snorted.

"Perhaps." She replied with a wicked curl of her lips. "It is what the Boss is paying me for after all and pretty soon I'll be able to buy my way outta this shit-hole!"

Riddick mirrored her silence for an equally long spell before also moving to sit back in his chair.

"Is that a fact?" he queried, a slight mocking tone colouring his deep voice. Jack could almost feel his desire to laugh at the audacity of her comments, though which one was more amusing to him she wasn't entirely sure. That made her angry. It stung deep in her chest and she reflexively clenched her teeth, if only for a split second. That was all the time that Riddick needed to notice her ire and his grin broadened slowly.

"Sloppy, Jack." He said breaking the silence by throwing her words back at her for a second time. "Didn't you learn not to reveal your weakness to your opponent?" this time admonishment and condescension tinted his words and Jack narrowed her mercury eyes.

"Anger is not my weakness." She retorted, though she kept her feelings in considerably tighter check. "It is my strength!"

"Is that what you feel when you do it?" he enquired calmly, his face deadpan.

"Pardon!" even five years in Butcher's Bay could not erase all of the etiquette that Imam had drummed into her over and over again. Riddick smirked to himself at that little revelation. His Jack was still in there somewhere, he just had to find her.

"I said is that what you feel when you kill all those men that the Boss sends to you?" he paused and leaned onto the table top, lacing his large, calloused fingers together in the gesture that showed his dominance over the situation. '_Alpha-male_' it said to all who cared to look, but Jack barely gave it a second glance. "Or is it simply your anger at me for leaving you?"

Jack stayed deathly still for so long that Riddick thought she had gone into shock. Then as he had been about to call to her she cocked her head to one side as she had so many times when she had been that innocent little girl considering one of his requests or queries. However, the voice that _this_ Jack used was icy, not even a sliver of her former self trickled through the façade that Riddick was certain that she had erected to keep _him_ out.

"No." she commented, drawing him out of his contemplations. "I'm not angry at you because you left me, Riddick." She shifted her weight so that she sat forwards, closer to him, returning her feet to the floor. "I'm angry because you saved me and damned me all in one moment!"

Her admission shocked both herself and Riddick and they stared at each other in open mouthed surprise. She hadn't meant to let him in on that little secret; she hadn't wanted to let herself get involved with him again! All she needed to do was snatch up her shiv and thrust it home, to his heart, the place where her memory obviously still resided.

'_Shit!'_ She thought tearing her eyes away from Riddick's confused gaze. She was doing everything wrong and this one little misstep may very well have killed her ass! But the emotional attachment was there none-the-less, had always been there. It had never died no matter how hard she had tried to kill it.

"Want to explain that little admission to me?" Riddick asked at length and Jack felt her eyes unwillingly snap back to his as if drawn be some magnetic impulse.

"Not really." She replied, her voice barely a whisper. She found herself neither willing nor able to tear her stare from his. Pure silver burned into pure silver flashing back as if two mirrors stood face-to-face reflecting their own image in the surface of the other.

"Talk to me, Jack." Riddick implored and Jack was suddenly reminded of the last time that they had spoken, five years ago.

_-Flashback- _

_She sat, knees drawn up to her chest, chin resting between her bony kneecaps and arms crushed to her body between her torso and her legs. _

_She'd known that this day was coming. She'd felt it in the atmosphere about the house. She'd seen it in the way that Imam and his newly taken wife glanced at each other when Riddick was in the room. So it should have come as little surprise to her. She shouldn't have felt so desperately desolate as she did but the tears wouldn't stop. She uttered no sound, simply sat huddled like that on the roof terrace, beneath the stars. _

_At first she had been terrified of the night, of the darkness and understandably so after the ordeal that they had been through. However, the night had become her companion. Her confidant. No one could see her crying in the dark. No one but the night could see her agony._

_"I can see you, Kid." His voice curled and twisted until it mingled with the pitch blackness, almost as if he had read her mind. _

_She sighed and shrugged. The silent treatment. She knew that she was being a pathetic little child, but it was her way of dealing with the enormity of his impending absence. _

_He moved closer to where she sat, her back against the small wall that enclosed the murderous suntrap of a terrace. _

_"You gonna tell me what's up?" he asked and Jack forced herself to remain silent and still, not even allowing a breath to pass her tight lips for fear that her will would crumble and she would let him talk his way out of this wordless punishment that he deserved. _

_Riddick stood for a long moment before realising that he wasn't going to get a reply anytime soon. _

_"Okay, Jack, okay. We'll play it your way." He sighed rubbing a large hand over his freshly shaven head. He crouched down beside her, facing her, resting his elbows on his knees and linking his hands together before him. "You gotta understand, Kiddo. I gotta be cruel to be kind."_

_"That makes no sense!" she scowled, more angry at herself for having broken her self-imposed vow of silence. She scrambled away from him and stood on the opposite side of the roof-garden, staring out at the diamond studded sky, clutching futilely at herself to keep the warmth in._

_Riddick was still for what seemed an eternity before Jack heard the rustle of his clothing, assuming that he was leaving and that she was safe finally to take a deep, shuddering, emotion-burdened gasp. She clamped her eyes shut tightly and more tears slipped silently and unbidden from their pale jade depths. _

_"It's not like I want to leave you…" his voice murmured from directly behind her, so close that the air between them seemed to vibrate with each rumbling syllable. She started in surprise, jolting her eyes open as his large hands cupped her thin shoulders, the heat from his palms spreading down through her chilled bones. "I have to leave…" _

_"But why though!" Jack demanded spinning in his grasp and staring wide and watery eyed up at him, forgetting her earlier tactic of mute fury. _

_Riddick shook his head as if it weighed too much for his neck to hold, refusing for a moment to meet her gaze. _

_"Don't look at me like that!"_

_But Jack didn't listen. _

Good! _she thought bitterly. _Let his conscience fester with guilt!

_She curled her long, slender fingers into fists, taking handfuls of his sleeveless black vest top._

"_Please, Riddick, please don't leave me!" she pleaded, not caring whether he saw her tears or not anymore. She was desperate, not above getting down on her knees and begging if she had to. Her pride was already in tatters and she'd long since stopped caring that it was. "Please!" she punctuated her last word with a thump of her white-knuckled fist against his chest but Riddick caught her wrist before she could repeat the action. _

"_Don't, Jack!" he warned though with little of his usual ferocity._

_She was a smart girl. She knew that she couldn't go with Riddick, wherever it was that he felt that he needed to go. She understood that, knew that she would put not only her life in danger if she went but _his_ and so she had never once argued to go with him. What she couldn't comprehend was why _he_ had to leave. Why he couldn't stay with her and Imam and Imam's wife, in New Mecca._

"_Why do you have to go?" she queried, not caring that her voice wavered inconsolably. "Why d'you have to leave us?"_

_Riddick answered her with and uncharacteristically soft smile and removed one of his hands from her skinny shoulder to smooth down her chaotic hair that had begun to grow back. _

"_I need to protect you."_

"_You can do that here!" Jack protested, standing on her tiptoes to get a better view of Riddick's face as he spoke, but he shook his head again. _

"_The mercs will come. I'm sure of it. The captain of the ship that picked us up knew who I was, he just didn't have the guts 'n' guns to take me down there and then. He won't have held his tongue for too long. There'll be hundreds on their way here as we speak."_

_Jack looked down at the ground beneath their feet, disappointment and despair coiling in her chest like a frigid spring. _

"_So, you're gonna go and save your ass and leave us to deal with the fuckers!" she challenged a little more harshly than she had intended, unable to look at him as she spoke for in her heart she knew that it wasn't true. _

"_You know it ain't like that." Riddick replied. "If I get sighted somewhere else, they'll leave New Mecca and Helion Prime altogether. You and Holy Man and Mrs Holy Man will be free."_

_Jack desperately fought the amusement that bubbled in her chest at Riddick's new nickname for Imam's wife. He's was playing dirty, bringing out the heavy artillery and trying to make her laugh for they both knew that she would not stay enraged at him for very long if she did. Instead, Jack focused upon her irritation that Riddick's reasoning was proving infallible. She hated to admit that it made total and utter sense and hated even more that it was all to protect _her

_She gave an erratic breath and her tears dried slowly even though her emotions still raged in a torrent. _

"_So…" she mumbled finally, a numb feeling settling in her belly. "Guess this is it. You are going tomorrow, aren't you? That's why you came to speak to me tonight, right?" she allowed herself a miserable chuckle. _

"_That's right." He replied, barely above a whisper. His hand smoothed over her hair again but it traversed suddenly, titling her chin so that she looked up into his silvery eyes. "Got somethin' for you." He muttered after some time and Jack forced a sour snort. _

"_I'm 14 years old, Riddick! 15 in four and a half months. I'm a big girl. I don't need presents to make me feel better. I'm not _that_ conceited!" She quipped. "Anyway, shouldn't _you_ be the one getting the presents for going away?"_

_Riddick smiled, looking more like his normal self. _

"_It ain't a present, Kid." He chuckled, leaning down suddenly, close to her face. "Gonna give you a promise, Jack."_

"_Promise of what?" she asked cautiously, sensing that something wasn't quite as it seemed. She quirked and eyebrow at his hesitance to reply but as she drew in a lungful of air to mutter a smart remark, Riddick leaned forwards and pressed his lips to hers firmly. _

_It was a light, tender kiss though not like the chaste ones that Imam and his wife placed on her head or cheek when she said 'goodnight'. No, it made Jack's head reel as if the world around her was spinning like a merry-go-round. Riddick was kissing her! A scrawny 14 year old girl, though it remained decidedly short and sweet. She understood the reason for that. She wasn't stupid by any means even if her head was particularly foggy at that moment._

_Riddick pulled back after an extended heartbeat leaving her lips buzzing in his wake, his shined eyes seeking hers but Jack held them closed tightly as if to emblazon that memory forever into her mind. _

"_A promise that when you've grown up, when I don't have mercs snappin' at my heels, that I'll come back for that kiss…I'll come back for you!" Riddick said after a breathless pause on both their parts._

_Silence. What could she say? Any notion of speech that flitted through her mind only seemed as if it would sunder the moment. So she stood stock still, staring at the insides of her eyelids, hearing the blood rushing in crashing waves in her ears. _

_Riddick's gaze turned to concern when she didn't open her eyes after a good few minutes. _

"_Talk to me, Jack!" he demanded, almost fearful of her reaction. He gave her shoulders a gentle shake and her jade eyes fluttered open, clearing as she glanced up at him properly._

"_Hurry up and leave." She whispered, her voice faint, whether with controlled anger or uncontrollable sadness Riddick couldn't determine and he allowed a pained expression to colour his face in a brief moment of distress. Quickly smothering his display of weakness, Riddick gave a resigned nod. _

"_Okay, whatever you want, Kiddo." He sighed with defeat, turning his back and making for the door that lead back into the house._

"_The sooner you leave, the sooner you can come back!" Jack called after him and he paused mid-stride, letting her words bounce around his mind until he could comprehend them. _

_Almost before he had time to turn, Jack had thudded into his chest, encircling her thin arms about his neck and drawing herself up to him, locking her similarly as skinny legs about his waist as if her life depended upon it. _

"_That's right, Jack. I will come back." He whispered into her ear, crushing her to him with increasing force. _

_Those where the last words that were spoken between them…_

_-End Flashback-_


	2. The Job part 2

I know I said that this story was gonna have two parts but I kinda got more into it than I thought I would. At first it was just to work out my writer's block but it's knid of evolved….got a life of it's own. Sorry that the second part is so much shorter than the first but hope its okay. Part 3 won't be far behind.

Thankies to all of you lovely comments! I was really surprised that so many people liked it. Thank you! This one is dedicated to all you lovely people who commented!

Happy Reading!

Gem

xxx

The Job (part 2).

"Talk to me, Jack." Riddick insisted again, with a little more force in his tone than previously, dragging Jack from her memories. She desperately swallowed the lump of emotion that had risen chokingly in her throat, attempting to replace her sudden feelings of sorrow with the fury she had known before. Her steely gaze focused back onto Riddick as he silently implored her to speak, to say anything. Finally, he spoke again, sensing that he wasn't likely to get a reply to his demand without further persuasion.

"I won't know what I did wrong 'til you tell me or at least give me a clue. I ain't a mind-reader, Jack." He said watching her intently for a flicker of sentiment or understanding in her pale, smooth, deceivingly innocent face. He found none.

Jack drew her lips back in a sneer at his words, relaxing into her hard-backed chair, draping her arms over the backboard and drumming out a rhythm on the hardwood with her fingertips.

"You want me to talk to you, huh, Riddick?" she queried with a cocky half-smirk and an arch of a shapely yet scarred eyebrow. "What do you want me to say?" she shrugged as she spoke, her quicksilver eyes holding onto his.

Riddick snorted, tiring of her games and riddles.

"How the fuck you ended up here would be a good start." He growled, folding his arms behind his head and resting his feet upon the table as Jack had done moments before.

Jack regarded him for a long time before giving a single, scornful grunt, drumming harder on the back of her chair until her fingertips ached. "You want me to talk to you…" she replied, repeating her earlier statement. Her voice was quiet, controlled, icy, so unlike the chatty, bubbly girl that Riddick had know five years past. She had changed. A lot. And Riddick still had to determine whether that change was likely to be permanent. Sure, some of the changes were good. Very good if her body was anything to go by. Slim, streamlined, lithe. What fun he could have with those long legs wrapped around him…Even her feral demeanour had it's allure. But there was something dangerous lurking in the depths of her deceptively small figure, something that was likely to be unleashed very soon if what his instincts were telling him were accurate and they always were.

Suddenly he was aware that she was speaking again, in a steady, deep throated growl that set his afore mentioned instincts blazing with warning.

"You want me to tell you how I came to be here? In Butcher's Bay?" she laughed and ran a hand over her jaw with a disbelieving shake of her head. "What a doozy…" she muttered almost to herself before looking back up at the man in front of her. "You want me to tell you how after you left five years ago that the mercs you mentioned came anyway even though you'd gone? You want me to tell you that they decided that since you weren't there that they'd take me instead? Try and get the information outta me, try and get me to spill where you went?" she paused ever so briefly, clenching her fists so tightly that her knuckles shone brilliant white through her scarred skin. "You said that you wanted me to tell you why I was angry about you saving me." she stopped again her voice having raised several notches in volume and tone. Emotions too numerous for Riddick to identify flashed like lightening from behind her mercury irises, a storm clashed within their metallic pits. "I'm angry because I owed you! I owed you big time! And because of that little…_detail_, I couldn't, _wouldn't_, tell them where you were!" she broke to claw air into her lungs, narrowing her eyes that were so like his own as she did so, her chest heaving with lack of breath and rage. Finally, she sat forwards and leaned her elbow back onto the table top her arrogant manner slowly rebuilding itself. "Because you save my, 'lily-ass', as you so eloquently put it, back on that fucking planet, I couldn't turn you in even when they beat up my 14 year old ass! Not when they tortured me! Not even when they…" her throat constricted involuntarily but Jack pushed the nearly foreign emotion back down before resuming her rant. "…when they took my innocence from me! The only thing that was ever truly mine and they stole it, ripped it from me without a second thought!"

Riddick watched her intently as she fell silent, burning a hole through the table with her platinum gaze. Her hands trembled uncontrollably as she clawed at her jacket pocket to retrieve another cigarette and her lighter, holding the toxic stick to her lips and lighting it with a flash of fire that stung Riddick's retinas. She took a deep, desperate breath of smoke that quelled her shaking immensely, returning her to the cold, calculating girl she had been moments before her revelation. She closed her eyes to enjoy the smoke rolling about her lungs.

"What about Imam?" Riddick commented in a deep, rumbling voice evoking a twitch upwards of Jack's lips, her eyes still closed as if she was basking in the warm rays of the sun.

"Imam?" she repeated as if she didn't know the man he spoke of. "Imam, Imam, Imam?" she paused for another smoky drag. "Mercs threatened his wife and kid. Threatened to take them instead of me." She shrugged as if it was merely a minor detail, something trivial. "Blood is thicker than water, don't they say, Rid?" she slitted one glinting eye open to glance at him through her hazy smoke and smiled again at his suddenly furious face before closing her eye again. "Oh come on, Riddick!" she scolded. "Did you really think that Imam would have given up his family for me? A scrawny little stow-away who just happened to be dumped on him?" she shook her head and mumbled to herself. "And everyone thought _I_ was naïve!"

Riddick growled at that, slamming his fist down onto the table, making the wooden legs splinter and crack in protest of the attack. "He should have done something!" he snarled. "He should have gotten you off world or contacted me!" frustration filled his mind, threatened to release the beast within him that was whispering all the ways that he would be able to kill those who had harmed, who had laid a finger, who had even _breathed_ on his little Jack! He clenched his teeth, bone-against-bone, causing a squealing noise as he ground them together.

Jack snorted, letting it spiral out in the darkness of her cell into a fully fledged laugh as if she had sensed his thoughts. "Don't get your pretty little head all worked up about it, Riddick." She sneered, blowing her mouthful of smoke out into an expert, carefully practiced smoke-ring. It floated out across the table, hitting Riddick square in his livid face. "I dealt with it."

"That the reason you're here, in Butcher's bay?" he wondered aloud, breathing in deeply and filling his lungs with the second-hand smoke that Jack had blown out, savouring the nicotine that her body had discarded. She elevated an amused eyebrow at his actions and held out the remains of her cigarette to him with a lopsided grin. He took it without hesitation, their fingers meeting in a brief unintentional caress, brushing calluses against calluses. He took a much needed gasp of it, stilling his breath inside him for several seconds before then rejecting the smoke in two hot jets through his nostrils.

"You could say that." Jack replied enigmatically, drawing invisible shapes onto the wood with a lazy finger, her other hand cupping her chin in a child-like gesture as she leaned her weight forwards onto the table. Her eyes followed his movements intently, storing them in her shiv sharp mind, cataloguing him almost.

Riddick chuckled and blew a smoke ring of his own that rivalled Jack's in skill. "C'mon, Jack. This is me you're talkin' to. Big Bad Evil. I ain't squeamish." He laughed again and she rewarded him with a small, nearly genuine smile.

"Alright." She replied. "There was five of 'em. Five of the sick bastards, not countin' the ones they slaved me out to. There were about 20, 30 of them, give or take." She paused and her eyes flashed down to the table between them as if she was suddenly ashamed of what had happened to her for a split second. Then she regained her steely façade and raised her stare back to Riddick's. "Took the first one out easy. Didn't plan it really, just spur of the moment shit." She took a breath before continuing with a wicked smile. "Dental floss round the throat. Quiet. No mess. Second was a bit of a struggle." A bitter chuckle escaped her tight lips. "Took a cheese knife to bed with me that night. He didn't like it." She smirked again revelling in the memory of the pain she had inflicted upon her tormentors. "Cut off his prized appendage, though it weren't nothin' to write home about." She held up her free hand and curled her little finger downwards while fisting the rest of her fingers into her palm causing Riddick to laugh. "Made him eat it and then I slit his throat." She sighed and gave a half-hearted shrug. "The third and fourth. Well," she shrugged again. "Not much to say really. Just got a bit 'slap-happy' with a spanner from the tool box they conveniently left open for me. Then there's number five. The head honcho." She smiled thinly and shook her head in mock-regret. "Gutted him like a fish and strangled him with his own entrails." She finished sitting back in her chair, resting her elbow on the back and twisting slightly to cross her legs in a more feminine pose.

Riddick gave her a mocking round of applause, a grin twisting his mouth to one side. His hands came together in slow, loud claps that shook the air about the tiny cell, echoing off the walls and pounding in Jack's eardrums.

"Jack, Jack, Jackie-Jack." His voice sang out as she sat motionless, fury boiling anew in her blood. "You're a fuckin' Greenhorn!" he laughed, loud and derogatory. "So why the hell did they stick you in triple-max? You shoulda been down in single with the small-fry."

Jack didn't lay into him like he had thought she would at his ridicule. Half of him had hope that she would. He like the feisty, furious side of her. It was something akin to his own inner demons and he would have gladly sat there all night and day locking horns with that side of her. But he knew that they didn't have all night.

Jack smirked her thin, provocative smile and moved the hand of the arm that draped across the back of her chair to curl and uncurl a strand of her wavy, shoulder length hair about her finger. If they had been in any other circumstances Riddick would have taken the gesture as flirting but he was starting to get to know this new Jack well and she wasn't about to flirt with him…just yet anyway.

"See, Riddick, that is where my little story gets interesting." She purred, uncoiling the hair from her scarred and scratched finger for a final time before blowing it out of her face with a puff from the side of her mouth. "I was heading down to single-max 'til the twisted little shits thought it would be fun to have nice, relaxin' little gang-bang." An irrational giggle escaped from her lips like the smoke she had breathed out earlier. She kicked one foot up to rest on the table and tugged until her bootlace slid unhindered from where it was securing her boot to her foot. She took an end in either hand, pulling it taut with a sharp crack and a grin. "Took all seven out with this little beauty. Not as easy as dental floss, not as clean or swift but it served it's purpose I suppose." She shrugged dispassionately, lifting her foot to rest on the edge of her seat, knee drawn up hard against her chest as she re-laced her boot. "I was in single-max for less than a day. Then they shoved me into double before I could get comfy." She gave a mockingly regretful sigh and folded her arms atop her raise knee. "Double was easy. Like bein' on a nice little holiday compared to bein' with those mercs. At least if you earn the respect there, they let you be." She paused as Riddick agreed with a curt nod and she cocked her head to one side. "Saw your name on the wall." She snorted, her luminous eyes thinning in jeering mirth. "How the hell did they ever get you to fight against someone called '_Bam_'?" she sniggered, shaking her head slightly. "Sounds like he'd have rather done you up the ass than fight!"

Riddick swallowed the anger that tingled in his chest at her comments. He could see it in her eyes that she wanted to provoke him. Perhaps so that he would lose his temper and initiate _their_ impending fight or perhaps it was to pay him back for making her enraged. Perhaps it was a bit of both but Riddick wasn't entirely sure. Instead he laughed _with_ her, evoking another of her curious stares.

"Given half the chance, he probably would've." He conceded, absentmindedly rubbing at the scar on his forearm where Bam had sliced him with an illegal shiv during their bout. "Took care of him before he had the chance though."

"Oh, so glad to hear it." Jack muttered sarcastically before sobering and nodding in acceptance of his words.

Riddick took another, much needed breath on the cigarette that she had given him. Smoke curled between the two for slow, silent minutes until he succeeded in sucking the cigarette of all it's potency and stubbed it out on the table as Jack had done previously.

"So…" he said scrubbing the ash into the grain of the wood, then flicking a finger up to indicate her face. "See you met the doc…"

-00000-

To be continued…

Sorry it's a cliff hanger but I wanted to get at least some of the next part out before I go to work. Hope you liked it.


	3. The Job part 3

And now we have part 3 in the ever expanding-ness of 'the Job'. This ain't the end…it's mutated again and more and more keeps coming out. The complete opposite to writer's block, I'm now having a writer's flood!

Thankies to all of you who have reviewed! You are so nice! Hope you like part 3 and again sorry that it is so short. Part four may be a little longer in coming coz I'm back at university on Monday but I'll see how it goes…

Happy Reading!

Gem

Xxx

The Job (part 3).

"So…" he said scrubbing the ash into the grain of the wood, then flicking a finger up to indicate her face. "See you met the doc…"

Jack grinned broadly and tossed Riddick an unexpected wink of confirmation.

"Sure did." She drawled, elongating her vowels and giving her speech an insinuating twang. Riddick had spent every single second since he had entered her cell manipulating her, playing with her head. It just wouldn't be polite of her not to return the favour and to her inner glee Riddick seemed to be taking the bait.

He sat pondering her comment, her tone, running a hand over his stubbly jaw unaware of her mind games. In then end he decided not to press for the details of how exactly she had found Pope Joe down in the bowels of the 'Bay' or how she had managed to pay for such an exorbitant treatment. A shudder almost skittered down his spine at some of the ideas that his beast was flashing before his mind's eye but he forced them down, back into darkness and instead turned his mirror-bright stare back to Jack.

She sat almost languidly before him with an astute smile tingling on her lips as if she had seen his thoughts and found them titillating.

"Oh, don't worry, Riddick." She said jovially, tossing her head back briefly to unleash a bleat of hilarity before leaning across the distance between them and giving his shoulder an ersatz pat of condolence. His large, well-muscled arm dwarfed her spread palm with ease and he glanced down at it as she withdrew, nostrils flaring in an attempt to keep his temper under control and himself from snatching up her retreating wrist and snapping it neatly in two.

"I didn't sell my body to get the shine job, if that's what's buggin' you." She continued to laugh and stretched her arms above her head, bones popping in her neck and shoulders. "Can't say that it would have made much difference if I had, though. I'm already second hand goods." She paused, mid-stretch, her arms still high as she contemplated her own words. "Well, actually it's more plausible to say that I'm something along the lines of fifty-eth hand goods…I stopped counting after that…" her eyes focused magnetically onto his as her voice waned and she halted to take a breath. The looks of joking and humorous self-scorn that where plastered on her face did not, however, reach as far as her eyes and Riddick could plainly perceive the pain lurking beneath the thin layer of jewel-like gleam as if he were glimpsing a rock beneath the dazzling surface of the sea. It was there, he could see it, he just didn't know how deep it went, whether he could reach his hand down and find that the water was merely a few inches or fathoms in depth? Would the hurt in her eyes be conquerable, could _he_ erase it? Or were the scars on her soul enduring?

For a second time Riddick realised that Jack was talking without his awareness and he re-focused his eyes on her as she placed her hands on her back just above her kidneys and pushed, arching herself so that her chest thrust forwards and her spine crackled in protest. The fleeting, haunted look that had passed behind her glassy pools had vanished back beneath the hard, outer shell that she had created, no doubt stowing that small glimmer of true emotion away from where Riddick could touch on it. Away from where he could feed it and bring the true Jack back out.

"I've banged men to get what I wanted before." She announced with a smirk and Convict Jack was back and as large as life. She rolled her head on her shoulders, pulling at the kinks and cricks as if she was warming up for a sparring session. She probably was Riddick realised with a vague pang of regret, though he stifled it and turned his attention back to their slowly deteriorating conversation.

"Isn't that what all women do?" he queried with a taunting curl of his lip and Jack shook her head at him condescendingly as if he had added two and two together and ended up with seventy three and a half. She placed both hands carefully, almost reverently, onto the tabletop and drummed her fingers, left hand following a split second behind the right.

"That's a very blinkered way of looking at it, Riddick, but yes…Sometimes." She replied to his question, flicking absentmindedly at her hair as it coiled about her neck with an irritating tickle. Finally she set her hands back down, locking her fingers together into a small cup shape as if to keep them still. "There are two types of men in our world, Riddick. In the world of convicts and prisons. 'Course you could argue that _all_ men are divided into these categories no matter where or who they are." She paused, her eyes of steel roaming over his body with a wry enjoyment. Her tongue slipped out from the captivity of her smart mouth and glazed her lips with a sheen of moisture, almost in anticipation. "Even _you_, Riddick." Her smile was tempting though she remained fierce as she continued to explain. "The first type are the men that you fuck to get something that you want." Her eyes lifted to the space just above his right shoulder, losing their diligence momentarily, as if she was remembering how many of those type of men she had pleasured. Then they snapped back to him, taking in the curve of his cheeks, his strong jaw, his usually full lips that were suddenly compressed together in a serious line. She gave a soundless snort, wiggling slightly to gain greater comfort in her torturously hard chair and cupping her chin in both of her hands, elbows drawn together as they rested on the hardwood. "Second type are those that you fuck for fun." Her mouth twirled into a girlish, imp-like grin that was severely out of place considering their topic of choice.

Riddick leaned forwards making the table creak beneath their combined weight. His eyes scorching into hers, searching for her meaning deep in those words, deep in her actions.

"Alright." He said after a long instant, giving the tabletop a light slap with the palms of his hands. "Here's one for your little theory." His eyes glinted with curiosity as he leaned closer still, his head quirking to one side in consideration. "Where do the rapists fit in?"

Jack stilled, understanding the reason for his question. He wanted to find out her mental state over the mercs incident. Sure, she had flipped out a bit before but she had long since stopped feeling sorry for herself, all that did was send you in a downwards spiral towards depression and it was near impossible to claw your way back out. She nodded her head almost as if she was impressed that he had worked up the nerve to ask her his question.

"Okay." she began, prodding the table between where his palms lay spread wide. "Say you get cornered by a rapist who you can't fight off and who is gonna pop a cap in your ass if you don't _behave_ yourself. You're gonna go along with it coz you want to live, right?" she cocked an eyebrow at him and she looked almost studious. It was obviously something that she had given a great deal of thought and Riddick again found himself wishing that he could have gutted the men who had taken her from New Mecca and changed his Jack so drastically.

Her snort brought him out of his murderous contemplations and she shook her head gently. She was beginning to notice his little spells of musing and no doubt the reason for them as well. She tilted her head in a sharp, quirky jerk, her eyes flashing silently, telling him that if he didn't like her answers he should stop asking the questions.

"After all, Riddick." She continued, her tone deceivingly jaunty. "What use is _'saving the rosary'_ for the right person if you're gonna end up dead?" there was a tinge to her eyes as she spoke that made Riddick scrutinize her more thoroughly. It was almost as if she was testing him, giving him some hint in her mercury glossed pupils. Their incandescent spheres almost pleading with him to speak the words that only Jack herself knew that she wanted to hear. He remained wordless, unable to translate her ambiguous glances just yet…

She sat back in disappointed silence abruptly, dragging her hands back along the surface of the table to land in her lap with a soft thwack, her eyes suddenly intent on studying the grain of the wood as Riddick noted her every movement with consternation, his brows drawing up to knot in concern. Incongruous emotions flickered across her face while she glared at the table as though in devout fascination. The silver purple colour that Riddick saw her in darkening on the apples of her cheeks suggesting a blush had risen, though he was perplexed as to why embarrassment unexpectedly rushed her body. Finally he cleared his suddenly thick throat earning a glancing flash of silver from where her head remained drooped.

"What about if you love someone?" he asked softly and her head did lift up at that, her eyebrows raised slightly as if the question had been unexpected. "What category does a man you love come in?"

Jack remained silent and still, the only movement in her face being the odd blink of her long lashed lids and the grinding of her jaw, teeth against teeth as she rolled his words about her mind. "Love?" she asked very nearly scornfully after a long, suffering moment of deathly quiet. "I don't believe in it."

"Sure you do, Jack." Riddick replied in an attempt to alleviate the sombre atmosphere that was pressing down upon them so heavily that he could barely draw air into his lungs. "All girls believe in love. That their knight in shining armour will come and sweep them off their feet, fighting away dragons and ogres." He allowed himself a small, lopsided smirk though it fell from his face swiftly when Jack shook her head, pose brimming with solemnity. She looked older, much older than her nineteen years…and yet at the same time she was all of a sudden the scared child that she had been on that hellish planet.

"I'm not all girls, Riddick…" she replied quietly with a half-heart shake of her head, tresses dancing about her lean shoulders. "Ain't no knight in shining armour coming for me anytime soon…"

-00000-

Sorry its so short and sorry it's another cliffhanger-ey type thingy-ma-jig. I should learn to stop at more appropriate intervals! Hope you like! Any hints, tips, criticism or comments are welcomed with my wide open arms!


	4. The Job part 4

Wow! Finally got part 4 out! Woooooo! Sorry it took so long but I've been slaving away over my dissertation! But I finished it and handed it in! Yay! So hopefully my posts won't be as far apart as they have been! Hope this is okay. Kinda edging towards the wrap up soon (sniff). But not for another three or four parts. Got it all planned out now so it should be pretty smooth sailing from here to the end. Fingers crossed it turns out okay. Well, this chap is the lead up to the fight scene (dun, dun, DUN!) which I'm working on real hard coz I want it to be good! Any tips or comments about writing fight scenes would be great. But I won't say anymore…don't wanna give it all away!

Thank you all for continuing to comment. I really appreciate it.

Okay Happy Reading!

Gem

xxx

The Job (part 4).

"Ain't no knight in shining armour coming for me anytime soon…"

Riddick's ardent incandescent eyes scanned her face as she spoke, unreadable to her entirely as they had been since the first time she had met him. She felt her skin burn almost where his eyes caressed, scrutinising her, attempting to dissect her as if she were a fucking test subject, an animal to be studied! She clenched her teeth and ground them together as irritation laced it's way down her spine and tingled in her chest, but she remained silent. Riddick obviously had something he wanted to say and she was inquisitive as to what it was. Even though Jack could not read the emotions that danced behind his eyes, tauntingly close, his soul irretrievably concealed behind the thin film of his iris', his body language was something that she had become fluent in, even after the sparse amount of time that they had spent together. The slight tensing of the muscles in his neck and shoulders was the first sign. A dead giveaway. The pursing of his lips and almost imperceptible tapping of his right thumb against the surface of the table were the final clues, illustrating that he was thinking, and thinking hard!

Jack swallowed the smirk of satisfaction at having read him so well that threatened to spill forth onto her lips and drummed her fingers on the tabletop again repeatedly, breaking the sanctimonious silence that they had found swirling about them as they sat face-to-face, head-to-head, glittering eye-to-glittering eye.

Finally, Riddick straightened in his seat and, resting his elbows upon the edge of the table, laced his rough, calloused fingers together, almost level with his chin. A one sided smile clawed at the corner of his lips and he blinked, once and deliberately, drawing a deep, slow, gentle breath.

"Maybe you just ain't seein' him." He said after the very nearly torturous paused and Jack wrinkled her nose up in scornful confusion.

"Ain't seein' who?" she queried, her voice tinged with disdain yet at the same moment a profound, unspoken curiosity that sounded so much like her younger self that Riddick found himself holding his breath and simply staring at her until she repeated the question. Then she spoke again and the slight glimmer of youthful pureness that she had shown him dissipated like mist in the sunlight. "I'm seein' lotsa men, Riddick. I got lotsa…customers, so you're gonna have to elaborate a little on who the '_him_' is."

Riddick shook his clean shaven head and turned his gaze disappointedly to the table. "Never mind." He growled out, his voice little more than a guttural rumble of barely concealed frustration. Was Jack beyond help? Was she unwilling to be helped?

Annoyance assaulted him suddenly, partly at Jack's stubbornness and partly at his own inability to get through to her, to draw the old Jack back out. His head snapped back up to her and the faint grin of the Beast within him filtered out onto his features. Perhaps the Beast could succeed where his humanity failed. He gave a mocking, sideways shake of his head and drew air through his clenched teeth in a slight hissing sound of admonishment. "You're a fuckin' lucky girl, Jack." He beamed sarcastically, leaning forwards as if he was about to share a valuable secret with her, though she regarded him with wary silver eyes. "It's a fuckin' good job that they give you the contraceptive injection and STD vaccinations before they let little harlots like you loose." He leaned back into his chair suddenly, folding his arms behind his head in satisfaction at the scowl darkening her face. "Other wise you'd be even further up Shit Creek and without a boat, let alone a pissing paddle!" he chuckled at his own words though Jack found them less than amusing.

She snorted, allowing her mouth to twist up into a snarl, revealing her brilliant white teeth. "You're such a condescending fuck, you know that?" she growled, tasting the contempt on the tip of her tongue as her words spat forwards vehemently. "When the hell did you start caring what the fuck happened to me!" she queried heatedly, her eyes flashing steely lightening at him.

Riddick declined to reply and Jack nodded with self-satisfaction as if his silence had proved her right. "When you left me on Helion Prime, in New Mecca, you lost any right you ever had to lecture me in what I can and cannot do." She paused and narrowed her tempestuous eyes, turning her head away from him slowly to stare at the damp, stone wall of her cell. A mute snort shook her body for a split second before she folded her arms across her chest in a defensive posture. "Your sentiments are a little fucking late, Riddick! And now they aren't worth shit to me!"

Riddick sat back in his chair again, shaking his head with a bitter smile. His large hand moved up to cap his skull, rubbing at the stubbly skin as if attempting to relieve a pounding headache. His sigh was impatient and filled with an annoyance that Jack had only ever heard once before. When Riddick had been talking to Johns on the nightmarish world that threw them together in the first place.

"Thought we'd established that you can't pin all your problems on me, Jack. I ain't your fuckin' scapegoat." He growled, only a single mercury orb visible from beneath the massive hand that had moved to massage his temples.

Jack contemplated that comment for what seemed like hours, though in reality it was little more than a scattering of minutes at the most. She turned her eyes back to him, studying him again, noticing the clenching and unclenching of his free hand and the twitch of a muscle in his jaw where he ground his teeth together in frustration. He was exquisite in his fury, in his natural emotion. More so than she had ever remembered. His soft lips pursed slightly as his teeth behind them harassed each other. His dark brows furrowed and drawn together in gently sweeping arcs or ire. The muscles in his shoulders, chest and back smooth contours that stood as monuments to his physical prowess. Beautiful…

_Stop it! _She hissed at herself mentally. _Stop remembering things! Stop remembering _him_! He's just another job!_

Talking with him, having a conversation, sharing a smoke, interacting with him brought the ghost of emotions that were liable to get her killed bubbling back to the surface again. There had been too much talking. Too much playful banter. She had to end it, for her sanity's sake if nothing else, and end it fast!

"No." she agreed after an extended heartbeat, her eyes searching his as if she could glimpse his thoughts through those galvanized pupils. "You ain't a scapegoat, Riddick. You're a lot of things, but a scapegoat ain't one of 'em." She halted her speech, her nostrils flaring in fury. Even the scent of him, the musky smell of sweat, adrenalin and his profound masculinity only served to enrage her further as her body began to respond to him in ways that her heart didn't want to accept just yet. "I would have been better off dieing on that fucking planet than having to live through all the shit I have since you cut out and ditched me!" she ground her words out through clenched teeth, spitting them in Riddick's direction though his face remained stoic. Jack nodded at his lack of response as if she had been expecting it. "See, I knew you didn't really care about me and my shit." She grinned in triumph, slapping a palm down in victory and making the table shudder briefly. "Life's a bitch, ain't that what you used to say? That which doesn't kill you makes you stronger, right?" she raised her eyebrows, leaning forwards and closer to him, awaiting for his reply.

Riddick didn't bat an eyelid as she spoke, he simply watched her, examined her the way that she had done with him moments earlier. She was playing a game, he could sense as much, though what she intended to gain from it he didn't know. His eyes followed her movements as the corners of her lips curled upwards at his continuing hush and she brushed a few stray curls of her shoulder length hair from her face absentmindedly with a twitch of her fingers. She was planning something, Riddick knew it. He'd always been able to tell when she had been scheming or lying, even when he had first set eyes on her when she had been pretending to be a boy. Even if he hadn't had such an acute sense of smell he would have spotted her falsehood a mile off. The secret was her body language. She chewed on the inside of her check when she was trying to turn a situation her way, and five years down the line, she still had that little telltale habit. Riddick smirked as she nibbled at it, her eyes flickering over him, feather light, as she watched him watching her.

Stalemate.

"What do you want me to say, Jack?" he sighed finally with a blasé shrug. "Shit happens and there only two things you can do about it. Forget it. Or get even." He paused and cocked his head to one side, gauging her reaction to his comments. "Shit happened to you, and you dealt with it. End of story."

Jack choked out a chuckle from deep in her throat, shaking her head and making her wavy tresses shiver about her face in the stale air. "I'm not after your pity, Riddick." She turned her head to the side and spat onto the floor beside him in disdain. "Your sympathy would be worthless, if you had any." She leaned back in her chair, pillowing the back of her head with her crossed arms again, a smug look playing on her features and Riddick had the distinct sinking feeling that told him he was playing right into her devious little hands.

"S'a good job I ain't offerin' you any then, isn't it?" he retorted snidely, attempting to win back control of the situation. "You want me to say sorry, Jack? You want me to apologise for something I knew nothing about?" he demanded though he doused his smile as Jack clenched her teeth harder than she ever had before, the pressure so intense that she thought her jaw might shatter from the sheer force. She stood abruptly, her chair legs squealing in protest as they scraped against the uneven, stone floor.

"You lied to me, Riddick." She spoke finally, her voice quiet with controlled anger. "You _promised_ that you'd come back for me and you didn't."

Riddick tried in vain to speak but Jack cut him off with a swift slicing motion of her arm.

"Instead it's taken you five years. Five _fucking_ years! And you're only here 'coz some fake-assed badge punk got lucky!" she shook her head with rage and disappointment, crossing her arms under her breasts and leaning her weight on one leg. She should have been used to such feelings by now as she had been let down so many times by people that she had trusted, people that she had counted friends…people she had loved.

Her eyes narrowed to mere slits of chrome. "I wish _you_ had fucking died on that planet instead of Fry. She wouldn't have left me to begin with no matter who was on her tail!" she spoke the words with little volume but they still served their purpose in getting a reaction from the previously impassive man sitting before her.

-00000-

Next up we have part 5 the fight scene between Riddick and Jack. Want to make it good coz the on in Chronicles was less of a fight and more of a scuffle. My fight scene is the key to how this fic ends so I'm gonna try and work my little sockies off. Please comment, tips, hints, criticism to help me see where I'm going wrong. Thankies for your help!


	5. The Job part 5

Well, here is part five. Sorry it's taken so long when I said it wouldn't. Got a bit carried away with helping out a friend on some of her stuff. Well, I hope this is okay. I know I said it was gonna be a fight scene and it kinda is, but it's not really what I wanted it to turn out like. It is really more of a scuffle but a whole, fully blown fight just wasn't fitting with the story so I had to alter it a bit. Hope it's not too bad.

Thankies for your reviews! Glad to have you're comments and criticisms! I need them to help me get better (which I hope is what I'm doing…)

Okay, this chapter has been written and re-written about seven times over. It's still not entirely how I would like it but I might go back and re-do it later. Hope it doesn't suck too bad!

Happy Reading!

Gem

xxx

The Job (part 5).

Riddick stood in a lightening fast, fluid motion that made his powerful muscles ripple beneath the thin layer of gleaming skin, pulling taut with frustration, anger and a barely maintainable control that stopped him from lashing out and striking her. Instead he swiped at the table that stood as the only division keeping them apart, sending it effortlessly crashing into the cell wall. The thunder clap of noise that his movements elicited echoed around the small chamber and before the clatter had finished reverberating around them, Riddick's vast hand had struck out, encircling her slender neck almost entirely. He could snap that beautiful little neck in two if he desired, or just a slight application of pressure and her windpipe would be blocked. But he didn't. He simply stood there fighting the Beast that clamoured to get out, to be released, to run rampant like he hadn't allowed it to in years.

Riddick drew his lips back in a soundless snarl due to the immense effort it was taking to keep the creature within him under restraint and he glanced up to take in Jack's reaction to his release of such aggression. He was curious as to what she would do now that her endless goading had born fruit.

No fear. Not a single ounce of trepidation in the least clouded her effervescent watch as she study him, retaining her previous fury and using it to match his own directly, like two black, thunderous clouds thrashing against each other. A storm was definitely approaching!

It seemed an eternity before either of them moved, as if their limbs had suddenly become stone, weighing too much for them to shift even a centimetre. In the end it was Jack who broke the motionlessness first, raising her smaller, though no less deadly, hands to wrap about his offending forearm, digging what remained of her bitten down nails into the warm, soft, supple skin as hard as she could, leaving small, crimson crescent moons when she moved her fingers to get a more firm grip on her assailant. She grinned broadly at his flinty expression, her eyes narrowing in fake mirth as she droved her fingertips harder into him, like semi-circular knives.

"So…" she purred, her quicksilver eyes flickering briefly from his face to locate where their shivs had fallen. Then she turned them back onto him, their depths icy and willing for a brawl. "How are we gonna do this, Riddick? Hmmm?" she cocked an eyebrow at him before continuing. "Only one of us is supposed to leave this cell alive, you know?" still he remained stoic and Jack allowed herself a thin smile as she released her iron grip on his arm and instead traced lazy, seductive circles over the skin she had pierced. Her languid glance shimmered up from her hands' activities to his face, smirking in triumph when Riddick's ebony brows knit together a little further. She ran her tongue over her lower lip, glazing it slightly before speaking again, her voice low, barely more than a whisper. "You gonna kill me, Riddick?" her smile hovered on her glistening lips and her eyelids fluttered closed in an extended blink that made her seem bashful, her dark lashes brushing against her cheeks. "You gonna go for the sweet-spot?"

Riddick grit his teeth at her words. She was toying with him, laughter clearly dancing in her eyes when she reopened them and fixed the flashing diamonds back onto him. He loosed a snarl, tightening his firm grip about her throat and her eyes winked closed giving him the impression, at first, that it was due to lack of oxygen. However, as he looked closer, the faint, almost none existent movements of her lips could be seen, as if she muttered out a fervent prayer to heaven above.

"Just another job, just another job…" she mumbled under her breath, over and over again as if repeating it would make the statement more true. He laughed deep in his throat at her. Never before had he met someone who could so suddenly go from one emotion to the other. From cocky and arrogant to nervy and tense as a tightly wound coil. He shook his head as he continued to chuckle and Jack's stabbing fingernails returned to their vicious assault on his forearm.

"You are one funny girl, Kid." He snorted and her eyes snapped open again to reveal not Jack but an animal not unlike the one that lay deep within him.

"Really?" she cocked her head to one side, or as much as was possible in his diligent grasp. "I try, I really do!" the final word sprung from her lips in a determined hiss as she kicked the heels of her boots together, hidden shiv-spurs springing forth from them. (A/N: Couldn't resist adding the spurs. You gotta admit that they were kick-ass in CoR!)

Riddick glanced down between them in mild, amused curiosity. A smile twirled at his lips as her leg curled in a flash around his in an attempt to slice his calf muscle open but he dodged deftly, almost without needing to try before he returned his eyes to hers.

"Frisky are we?" he chided and Jack snarled like a wildcat, her leg already in motion as she tried to spur him again, though it was as fruitless as her first assault. "Nice, Jackie. Real polite. Such manners." He snickered and Jack painted a false smile onto her face, barely holding down the fury that would make her blind and get her ass killed.

"Thanks." She replied through gritted teeth as feral as Riddick was himself. Wild. Ferocious. Untameable. "Coming from _you_ that means oh so much!" sarcasm sparkled from her tongue like a lit fuse, like she was spitting tiny razor blades at him, piercing his flesh like her nails were his arm and Riddick clamped his jaw together, the muscles in his temples working as he chewed down, grinding his back molars together in irritation.

And Jack saw it. She saw the tensing and smirked, tutting at him in reprimand for a second time that night. "Riddick, didn't you learn not to reveal your weakness to your opponent?" she teased, tossing his earlier words back at him. Her eyes searched over his face, moving back and forth, up and down like small, luminescent, heat-seeking lasers, though _her_ lasers, deep in her pupils, searched not for heat but for a weakness in _him_.

In the blink of an eye and with a frustrated roar Riddick shoved her backwards, as far away from him as was possible in the tiny room, releasing her neck from his grasp. Watching as she moved, twisting her agile body like a panther to land in a defensive fighting stance, slipping a second shiv from the back of her belt. He snorted. He should have expected as much from her. She had always been a clever girl and after years in Butcher's Bay she had combined that intelligence with a ruthlessness that made her a deadly little package.

"I'm not gonna fight you, Jack." He replied, his voice thrumming around the stone room and reverberating through the young girl's chest. "No matter how hard you try your little damnedest to provoke me."

"Why not!" she demanded with a cocky snort and a shrug of her thin shoulders. She spun the shiv around in her hand, palming it, searching for the most comfortable handhold. "Cause I'm a woman?" her eyes pulsed up to meet his for a single, electrifying heartbeat before returning to the shiv. "Cause I'm not a man? What? You think I can't hold my own?"

Riddick took a deep, steadying breath, hooking his thumbs through the belt loops of his trousers. "Because I _know_ you can't hold your own." He replied and grinned inwardly at the sour look that passed through her eyes. Her nose wrinkled in contempt and she had not a slightest clue that Riddick was shifting the balance of power from her to him. That he was using her own game against her. That he was enjoying vying for power with her and wanted nothing more than to see her at her most furious…and she was getting there. To boiling point.

"Shut up and fight me!" she roared, her shout resonating about the cell, clenching her fist so tightly around the handle of her shiv that she almost broke the skin of the palm of her hand. "Fight me, you _coward_!"

Riddick was in motion before the final syllable had finished ringing about them, slipping another of his own shivs from his belt much as Jack had previously. Her eyes widened slightly as she saw the muscles coil beneath his skin and then he was merely a blur of movement. As insubstantial as the air that she clawed desperately into her lungs. But Jack had not spent five years stuck in the bowels of Butcher's Bay and not learned anything about fighting! Her body responded to his sudden rush at her as if on reflex, autopilot, twisting away from his oncoming assault and ducking as she sensed that his arm swinging after her, intent on dragging her back. Air whispered over her head, whisking through her hair and tickling her scalp but she had little time to acknowledge it as Riddick spun and made to snatch a fistful of those tresses. Again Jack was quicker, spinning away from him and rising to stand at her full height as she went, shiv clasped, blade pointing downwards and legs spread for balance.

Riddick looked at her as she stood, knees bent ready for his next move. She was fast, he had to give her that but she was flighty, nervous even. He could see it in the fast twitching glances that she took around them. He smiled thinly and waited. Watching for the slight movements of her body, the way she gripped her shiv, her left foot sliding back scuffling in the dirt slightly. She was going to push off from her right leg then, and that more than likely meant a feint to her right. He smirked again and as Jack pushed off from where she stood, she did indeed fake an attack to her right, traversing and almost side stepping to her left where Riddick's arms waited to encircle her.

The breath left her body in a whoosh, leaving the terrible, almost sickly feeling of being winded in the pit of her stomach as his arms tightened about her.

"Let me fucking go!" she growled, fighting against him thought to no avail. While she was faster than he was; Riddick was a man, a very powerful man at that and no matter how much she trained, that power, that _strength_ was something that Jack could never possess.

Riddick smiled against her ear, his silent laugh whispering by in a soft caress of air. "I'm not a coward." He replied, ignoring her demand for release and her struggle against him. "You know I'm not."

"Whatever…" Jack spat, stilling momentarily. "So…we gonna stand like this all night?"

Riddick shrugged in reply, an action that nudged against Jack's back, pressing them closer together. The cloth of his prison vest rasped against her jacket. "Could do. I got all the time in the world…that is, unless you have something else that you're concocting in that vicious little head of yours."

Jack snorted at Riddick's words and grinned, knowing that he would sense it even if he couldn't see it. "I might have." She replied in a jaunty tone, moving her right foot backwards slightly, the high, cheerfulness in her voice drowning out the sound that the scraping of her rubber sole made against the gritty floor. "You never know with me. I'm a bit of an enigma!" the last word was punctuated by the swift, slicing of her spur against Riddick's shin, catching him off guard and making him curse loudly. However, his arms stayed firmly locked about her and he shoved his body into hers, knocking her forwards and into the cell wall roughly.

Hands tightened about her wrists in front of her and Riddick pulled them up and over her head to secure them in a stringent, one-handed grasp at the nape of her neck, pushing her a little harder in to the rock of the wall, though not enough to cause any permanent damage.

"You like fucking with me, don't you?" he demanded, leaning heavily against her so that she was crushed, unable to move at all.

Jack replied with a strained laughed that was muffled by the way her right cheek was pressed up against the wall and her elbows and arms were forced up either side of her face, penning her in. "Very much!" she struggled to retort and Riddick growled, the vibrations seeping through her back to tingle in her own chest, almost as if she had growled herself.

"But do you realise just _who_ you are fucking with?" he asked in a conversational tone and her breath caught in her throat when she felt the cold steel of his shiv tracing a delicate pattern on her lower back. Slowly, seductively almost, the tip of his shiv inched upwards, taking with it the bottom of her top and jacket revealing the smooth, pale skin of her lower back, seeking the sweet-spot that she had so brazenly mentioned before, asking him if he would go for hers. However, what he saw there made him pause. Made the shiv leave the trail that it had kissed at the bottom of her spine and made the breath still within him. His eyes bored a scalding hole into the back of her head, silently demanding an explanation for what he saw there, sprawled and running from hip to hip, stark against the beautiful smoothness.

She knew he had seen it. The way his breathing had changed told her that much and silently she cursed herself, listening hard for some reaction out of him. Something that would indicate what exactly his next move was likely to be.

"What the _fuck_ is that?"

-00000-

Sorry to leave it at another cliff-hanger! It's getting' to be a habit with me. Next chapter is make or break time for Jack and Riddick. I wonder, can anyone guess what it is that's on Jack's back? Hmmm……….


	6. The Job part 6

Part 6. Woohoo! The penultimate part. Nooooo! I don't want it to end! I'm gonna cry! There's an epilogue coming after this but then it's all over.

Anywho, hope this is okay. Wanted to get it out and put you all out of your misery. Too many cliff-hangers, I know! Thank you all for continuing to review I really appreciate it and I'm glad you like it so much!

Okay Happy Reading.

Gem

xxx

The Job (part 6).

"What the _fuck_ is that?" he demanded again and Jack shut her eyes, squeezing them together so tightly that brilliant dots danced in the blackness of her eyelids. When she didn't answer he shook her slightly, knocking her into the wall. He was starting to get angry.

"Piss off!" she snarled, face still crunched up against the coarse wall. "It's got nothing to do with you! You shouldn't even have _seen_ it!"

Silence met her retort and then the sound of Riddick's shoes scraping against the floor as he knelt down, her hands still captured within his much larger palm, burning hot about her freezing cold wrists. Desperately she pleaded that he would take his investigation no further. That he would simply be content to look at the thing that emblazoned the small of her back. But Riddick was not one to do things by halves and she felt the heat from his free palm, wavering slightly as he debated whether to reach out and touch it. And he did. She winced when his rough fingers stroked over the skin, tracing the intricate, beautifully interwoven pattern of words that she had paid to have forever inscribed upon her flesh.

She'd had the tattoo done years ago. Long before the mercs came and stole her away from the life that she loved. It had been right after Riddick had left and the direct result of a long conversation with Imam about those that had died upon the treacherous world that had thrown the ragtag band of humans…and animals, together. Imam had not been best pleased but had relinquished his anger when she had told him that it was _her_ prayer for them…for Fry, for Shazza and Zeke, for Paris, for Ali, Rashad and Hasan…even for Johns.

Jack was torn out of her memory by Riddick's fingers tracing over the stunning black lettering, spelling out the words, reading them almost like a blind man would read brail. He let out a breath, the warm air fanning out across her back and sending a shiver up her spine involuntarily.

"You wanna tell me about _this_?" he queried a little more gently, punctuating his final word by giving the offending tattoo a prod. His eyes scored into the side of her face that was visible and she frowned, turning away from his soul-invading stare.

"It's nothing." She snapped, grinding her teeth as she sensed Riddick smiling to himself.

"It's somethin', Jack." He bit back, though his words held a ring of the laughter that was no doubt desperate to spring forth from his throat. She wanted nothing more than to turn around and slap the stupid grin from his face. "It _says_ somethin'." He continued, hoping to coax her into an explanation of any degree but Jack didn't want to play that game, didn't want to go there. He cocked his head to the other side, bringing her furious profile back into view and continued. "Says _'Hunter Gratzner'_ if I'm not mistaken and I very rarely am."

Jack scowled and turned her face away from him again, angry at herself more than anything for having the desperate desire to commemorate those who she had loved, though she had barely known them a few hours.

"Seems to me…" Riddick purred as he stood, lifting her arms above her head as he went and turning her so that she faced him, back forced up into the place that her front had just been. Both of his larger hands pinned hers above her head and he smiled, a broad, triumphant smile, leaning in so that she was prevent from movement by his weight. Jack struggled at first but halted when he began speaking again, every syllable rumbling through her, from his chest to hers. She didn't even need to hear him, didn't need to see his lips forming the words as he spoke, for every single one ricocheted deep inside her, almost as if she had spoken and not him.

"It seems to me that you ain't the cocky, cold-hearted little bitch that you make yourself out to be." He neared her, moving his face so that they were cheek-to-cheek, his mouth grazing against her ear. "Now why do you sell yourself short like that, huh?"

Jack kicked out with her spurred heels again, a cry of frustration clawing it's way from her throat, but it was more to stop his words than inflict any pain and again it ended in failure. Riddick stifled her desperate onslaught by spreading her legs wide with his own and covering her booted feet with his, standing on her toes to keep them still.

She clenched her teeth, finally looking him deep in the eyes, nostrils flaring like the wild mares that used to run free on Earth. "Why are you doing this?" she asked, her voice quiet as she pleaded for answers, any answers at all. "Why are you here at all?"

And Riddick smirked in elation. The tattoo upon her back was the last clue, the final piece to the puzzle that told him that Jack _could_ be saved, that she _wanted_ to be saved somewhere deep down in her subconscious. She could have paid a few measly credits to get it removed if she had _actually_ turned into the cold, calculating little shit that she was pretending to be. But she hadn't. The mark of remembrance was still there, still elegant and ferocious all at the same time as it curled and swooped in wide, skilfully crafted, arching script, staking it's claim to her body like he wanted to.

"There's only one reason why I'm here, Jack." He replied softly, his lips quirking upwards in a gentle smile that made Jack more furious and more nervous. Her bright eyes darted around seeking any means of escape, frantic almost in their quest, clawing at the walls, the ceiling, the floor, anything and everything. Riddick jolted into her slightly and her wandering eyes snapped back to him and she stilled, even the breath in her lungs stopped for the few seconds that they were linked together by some force unknown. "What?" he chuckled suddenly, breaking the bond briefly. "You actually thought that some stupid little merc fucker caught me?" his clicked his tongue in mock-disappointment. "Shit, Jack you're denser than I thought!"

Amazingly his use of her earlier comment against her did not provoke the rage that he thought it would, Jack simply stared at him, her expression clear and unguarded for once, as if something profound was finally dawning on her. Like the secrets of the many universes were unfolding before her very eyes as she stood there crushed between the hard, cold stone and the firm warmth of Riddick's body.

"You came for me?" she queried finally, her voice so quiet that Riddick wasn't certain that he had actually heard her speak.

"I always collect my debts, Jack, and I've been waiting five years, five fucking long years to collect this one."

The breath caught in Jack's throat again as her mouth opened and close several times in succession from the shock. Never before had she been so lost for words. And suddenly a slight shimmer of tears formed in the eyes of the small but hardened criminal, though they didn't fall, she would never allow them to fall. However, instead of smiling the great, wide smile that she had as a child, the smile that she had always smiled just for him and the one that Riddick had expected from her when she finally realised _why_ he was in Butcher's Bay for the second time, her brows knit together in panic and she began struggling again with more fury than he had ever known in the slip of a girl.

"Let me go, _let me go_!" she cried and her voice quivered with the vehement desire to be free.

Confused, Riddick did as she demanded, relinquishing his tight hold and stepping back from her, allowing her to slip away from him. What was the problem? She shook as if he had almost slit her throat. Her eyes were wide, spooked, as she placed her back to the wall as far away from Riddick as she could possibly get. He had almost strangled her and not an iota of fear had passed through her veins, but at his mentioning that he had in fact returned for her like he had promised her he would, she looked like a frightened child, the child she had been on that planet.

She was speaking, mumbling really, to herself at first but when she realised that Riddick was concentrating on her again she looked up at him, irises shining with her unshed tears, with all the emotions that she had kept back from him during the entire night.

"I-I don't think I can do this…" she stammered, high and breathy as if she had been starved of oxygen and then suddenly allowed to breathe it again.

"Do what, Jack?" Riddick questioned, scrubbing a hand across his head in weariness. She had worn him down, simply talking with her had made him feel bone-weary, exhausted like he hadn't in many years.

"This." She responded, gesturing between herself and the man opposite her with a quick flick of her wrist. "The whole '_feeling'_ kick." She shook her head almost sadly before glancing up at him with fluid eyes. Cracks in her mighty façade forming in front of Riddick as he watched the myriad of emotions flashing behind those eyes like rapid-fire.

Finally she sighed, breaking the silence that had fallen upon them and held her hands out palms up in a pleading gesticulation. She looked as tired as he felt and the fear in her eyes told him that this was likely to be the last chance that he ever had to help her, to bring 'His Jack' back out from the shadows of the hardships that she had endured. They were walking a knife edge and everything rode upon their next exchange of words, the air about them suddenly becoming thick and balmy with the tension that pulsated about them.

"Ask me to fuck you, Riddick." She stated blatantly, her face blank and he raised his eyebrows in surprise. "That I can do and do it well." She paused with a sneer of self-loathing. She hated what she was, Riddick realised with quiet astonishment. She hated what she had become. "I just…I don't know if I can _feel_ anything. I can't cope with feeling things…I don't know how." She paused again, seeing that the confusion at her sudden skittishness had ebbed from his face though it hadn't entirely dissipated and she smiled another poignancy filled smile, deigning to let Riddick in on her feelings finally, laying her soul bare before his scrutiny. She was tired of the charade her life had become.

"It took me five years to forget what emotion is, what feelings are. I spent five years killing any feelings that I had off just so that I wouldn't have to feel the pain anymore." She began, moving slowly as she spoke to right the tables and chairs that they had knocked asunder during their scuffle, placing them almost religiously back into their rightful positions. She turned to him, pure, glinting eyes searching his face as she continued to speak. "Before, when I told you that I didn't believe in love, I wasn't lying, Riddick. I'm numb to it all now and I don't know if I can ever feel how I did before…" she shook her head, tearing her gaze from his and turning to move towards the door to her cell, intending to leave him there.

Riddick stared after her, hopelessly as she moved slowly towards the exit, subdued and diminished, her brilliant, incensed, stunning demeanour gone entirely, leaving a hollow shell of a girl. She was likely to get killed if she returned into the labyrinthine cell-blocks as she was. He cleared his throat and shifted slightly and causing a pause in her steps, though she kept her back turned to him.

"Before the Hunter Gratzner, Jack, I was the same. Numb, immune to emotion. It's a requirement if you're gonna survive in a place like this." He motioned around the room but Jack didn't see, her gaze firmly intent on studying the metal door before her. "Wouldn't have given two shits and a bitch 'bout ghostin' your skinny ass." She snorted at that, her head bobbing with a brief flash of amusement and Riddick swallowed. He'd never been good with words, with expressing himself to others, but he had to…for Jack. And so he swallowed a second time and continued. "Carolyn helped me to see that it isn't so bad feelin' for someone. She helped me to realise that carin' and shit ain't a weakness, more of a strength. It's what drove her, made her a tough-assed fucker when it came down to the heavy-shit." He paused and noticed, with a small smile of delighted amusement, that Jack had tensed at his uncharacteristically fond mention of the spunky, blond woman who had died for them. A smirk ghosted across his lips at her twinge of jealousy despite the events that had occurred between them since they had come together again. She didn't realise that the only reason that he spoke of Carolyn Fry lovingly was because she had given him back his ability to care, paving the '_would-be'_ way for him and Jack…if he ever reached her.

"She set the ball rollin', Jack. But you!" he paused as she finally turned back to him, sending her wary glance over her shoulder and swallowing the hard lump that had risen chokingly in her gullet. "You, Jack, made me actually _feel_ again. Made me believe again." His smile was broad as he placed his hands palm down on his chest, though the gesture still held a certain male cockiness about it. "How 'bout you give me a crack at returnin' the favour?"

Silence panned out around them as Jack soaked up his words, swilling them around her head as if she couldn't comprehend them. Doubt still tingled at the edge of her awareness. So many people had betrayed her, too many people…

"I said I'd come back for you, Jack." Riddick said suddenly forceful, a scowl darkening his brow. "I ain't leavin' this shit-hole without you!"

Her eyes shone with true understanding, as if a flame had sparked, igniting the fire that had burned deep within her old self, though the fire needed immense fanning before it burned as bright as it had in her youth, when they had been together.

"I can't promise you that it can be the way it was." She warned, turning to face him fully. "I don't even know if I can feel what I felt for you again." She sighed and shrugged her shoulders but Riddick simply smirked, a wickedness streaking through his silvery eyes. He stepped closer to her. To his Jack. To his changed Jack.

"One step at a time. If them's your terms for coming with me, then I'll accept them. I ain't gonna force any emotionally ties on you until you are ready-"

"_If_ I'm ready!" Jack interrupted tartly and her mask, her hard outer shell slowly began to rebuild itself.

Riddick laughed, tossing his head back letting the relief flow freely in his deep tones of humour. "Alright, smartass-_if _you're ready." He amended, tossing her a devious grin. He stopped before her, resting his hands on his hips and cocking his head to one side, looking her up and down properly.

Finally Jack growled, crossing her arms across her breast and frowning in irritation at his lingering stare. "Well! I thought we were getting' out of this fuckin' dump! That is unless you're getting' all choked up about the memories of when you where here last."

Riddick released a snarling laugh before moving towards the door, to their exit, to their freedom. He'd done Butcher's Bay before and that had been alone. With the shiv sharp mind of Jack to speed them along, Riddick had no doubt that they would be out of there within the next twenty four hours.

"Whenever you're ready, Jackie-girl. Whenever you're ready."

-00000-

Don't worry that's not the end, got an epilogue coming up so you can see where they end up and whether that's together. And yay! I didn't end on a cliff-hanger! Go me! Hope you all enjoyed this one. I can't believe it's nearly the end! s'gonna be sad to finish this…


	7. Epilogue

Here we go. The finale. Hope it's worth the wait. I'm really sad about finishing this but I'm pleased that I actually have. I've never finished anything that I have written in my entire life!

Lots of thanks goes to everyone who has been reading this, you've been great and I hope that this final piece to the story fills things in a little bit for you. Hopefully it will warrant a re-reading now and again.

As to a sequel, I have no plans or ideas to start one just yet. But I'm not saying that I never will…I'll see what my brain cooks up.

Okay, without further ado this is the epilogue. Hope it doesn't disappoint but I'm happy with the way things have turned out.

Happy Reading.

Gem

xxx

Epilogue.

So it was.

Butcher's Bay, the Multiverse's highest security prison, had been beaten again. It's weaknesses lain bare before the two silver-eyed killers.

The authorities denied that any escape had taken place, for fear that a second such embarrassment would cause the 'Bay's' closure and cost them their disreputable livelihoods. None of them could bare another shameful stint in the public's cruel eye and they had learned hard lessons from the first time that Richard B. Riddick had belittled their security, knocked it aside like it was a trivial matter.

Instead, the slam bosses concocted a cover story, announcing to the public in an emergency news broadcast, that the notorious serial killers Richard B. Riddick and Jack B. Badd, who had according to them had a grudge against each other, had fought it out deep in the belly of the prison where no one could prevent it. The wounds that they inflicted upon each other had been too great for any chance of survival and both had passed away, leaving the many universes free from their terrible reign, from the fear that gripped every heart at the mention of their names. And then they hoped and prayed to God that the two murderers would lie low, or if they did have to kill again, do it _covertly_…

The Multiverse had rejoiced in the false knowledge. Street parties were thrown, and the galaxies gave a great collective sigh of relief…and so had Riddick and Jack, cramped into their tiny prison transport skiff, in space so deep that no one besides themselves could hear their howls of exaltation at being pronounced dead. There was no more bounty on their heads. No more mercs riding their asses for a hell of a payday. They were as free as the universes thought themselves…

And so they had celebrated. In the only way that they could, in the only way that they knew how. The way that they so desperately needed, though it was a poor substitute for the true emotion that they had shared in their past…that they hoped to share again.

That was the beginning…

Through endless weeks of space travel, they barely touched save for the salacious fervour that consumed them almost every night, though they never kissed. For a kiss was filled with too much emotion for Jack to deal with. They did, however, speak. Neither had been very good at expressing themselves to others over the years and in the first few days they did nothing but argue as bitterly as they had in Butcher's Bay. They even came to blows a couple of times, though that only ended in another act of desperate lust…not that either particularly minded.

It took them three months to reach the nearest colonised world and dump their conspicuous means of transportation, trading it in for a run-down, two birth skiff named 'The Bawdy Mistress', a name that amused Riddick to no end and earned him a well aimed kick in the balls when he likened the name to Jack.

During the weeks they had spent cooped up in the prison skiff they had discussed Jack's past in depth, figuring that _that_ was the root of the problem, was the key to bringing her feelings back out into the open. And so they agreed. They would hunt down and kill any man that had ever bought the services of Jack's fourteen year old body. She had always planned to do as such and had not spent her time in the 'Bay' idly. Instead she had catalogued the location of every single world that she had been taken to and slaved out.

From then on the pair moved from world-to-world, system-to-system as Jack methodically searched out every single man who had forced himself upon her, thinking her his property for the two hours that he had paid for.

Riddick had argued desperately that he should be the one to perform the killing, he wanted to kill them. Every single one as slowly and painfully as he could but Jack had refused. It was her fight. Not his. It was something she had to do alone.

The first man that she had killed left her so distraught at the memories of what he had done to her even as she had begged him not to, begged him to stop and help her escape. She sat amongst the carnage of her creating, having been blinded by a rage so deep and desperate that she had taken him apart with her bare hands, biting and scratching like a wild thing. She had sat amongst her destruction for so long that the night had waned, the new day had risen and died and in the darkness of the next night, Riddick had come for her, finding her caked in dry blood, only a single tear snaking a clean path down her crimson cheek.

That had been the beginning of the emotion, though it was just a single, silver drop of upset, and Riddick had simply taken her hand and held it. A small gesture though it was, and Jack had allowed it, even grasped his hand back slightly, taking the comfort that she needed until she could stand and they left, hands still firmly linked as if by magnetic impulses so strong.

The killing had continued and with each and every death, Jack felt a little more of her old self ebbing back into her heart. And as that happened, so too came the emotion. Building and building each time until she sat sobbing and clinging to Riddick desperately, inconsolably, when he arrived to retrieve her as he always did.

As more and more of Jack's heart began to feel again, the less they came together in acts of fiery passion, though not through lack of desire on either part. Sometimes they both still needed the release that their frantic joining brought, but as the number of her tormentors dwindled, so did Jack's lust, as it turned instead into more real emotions.

Their arguments also diminished greatly and small gestures such as the brushing of hands or a simple embrace, suddenly became a ritual.

Then, one day out of the blue entirely, Jack had taken it a step further. Placed a kiss, just a chaste pressing of her lips, to Riddick's cheek as she paid her long overdue debt to him. It was then that Riddick truly realised that _'His Jack'_ was back, though she still had a ruthlessness that prison had ingrained into her. And Jack realised that she was as deeply in love with the man who had saved her so many times as she had been before he left her…

-00000-

3 years post Butcher's Bay.

The Aeries Cluster.

Planet Zenith Minor.

When she reached the hangar, their ship, 'the Bawdy mistress', was in complete darkness, allowing her to finally remove her goggles. She pushed the black tinted lenses up onto her head like an Alice-band, holding her long, wavy tresses back from her face.

Her shined view took in everything, saw everything in the darkness, though she knew he was there without the aid of her night-invading gaze. She smiled, rolling her eyes in slight exasperation as she neared, rummaging in her pocket for a spare cigarette.

"I told you to stay on the fucking ship." She growled, stopping before him where he sat waiting for her on a spare cargo crate.

"Me?" he replied with false incredulity, pointing at himself as an innocent look flashed over his face, hiding the smirk that she knew tugged at his lips. "I stayed! I ain't left this spot!" he defended and Jack rolled her eyes again.

"Like hell you did!" she retorted with raised eyebrows. "I saw you, you sneaky shitter!" she jabbed a finger into his chest to prove her point before touching the end of her cigarette to the burning end of his, the ashy kiss resulting in her smoke sparking to life. "Still worried I'm gonna do a bad job?" she queried with a chuckle, taking a breath of smoke and watching him do the same as he remained silent, his bright eyes intent on hers. "Did you check it, like you did with all the others? Just to make sure I didn't leave any evidence that could get your ass busted?"

"Shut up." He laughed, leaning back against the hull of their ship and tossing his cigarette stub to the ground. He grinned devilishly, hooking his fingers through the belt loops of her trousers and tugging so that she stood, legs resting against the metal crate he was sat on, between his knees. She arched an eyebrow at him but allowed a smile to grace her lips. "Just like to keep my eyes on that ass of yours, that's all. I worry about you."

Jack rolled her eyes a third time and flicked her half-smoked stub of a cigarette to join his on the hangar floor. "Well don't!" she growled, placing a hand on either of his knees. "I can look after my own ass!"

"Sure you can." He teased, his grin broadening. "Just like you did when I left you on your own last time."

Jack scowled, folding her arms in self-defence. "So Butcher's Bay is still a long-standing joke? You still find it funny?" she demanded with a hiss and Riddick laughed again, his hands travelling from her belt loops to rest on the smooth, exposed swell of her hips.

"Hilarious." He retorted, his large, callused thumbs making tiny circles on her bare skin in consolation.

"You're impossible!" she snarled as a shiver cork-screwed it's way down her spine, making the soft, downy, golden hairs of her lower back prickle and stand up.

"I try, I really do." he tormented, using one of Jack's own favourite sayings against her, triumph flickering over his face, dancing in his iridescent irises that reflected her own.

"You're fucking insufferable sometimes, you know?" she sighed sounding weary and Riddick relinquished his teasing grin, smoothing a large hand over her cheek in a rough caress.

"I only checked up after you'd done it." He said, changing the subject back to the bastard that she had just taken out. "I respect that the killing part is always private."

Jack's mercury eyes scrutinized him, her silver pupils darting over every inch of his face, finally returning to his eyes. Then she smiled, reluctantly at first, her pride still stinging a little from his joking, but then with more feeling.

"He was the last one, you know." She grinned, lacing her arms about his neck and shifting so that she straddled him, her knees and shins resting on the top of the metal crate and her booted feet hooked over the edge either side of his legs.

"I know." He responded, pulling her more tightly against his so that she had to shift again and wrap her legs about his waist, ankles crossed behind him. "You okay?" he queried raising his eyebrows in concern and moving so that her eyes that had shifted away from his face were forced to look back into his again.

"Yeah…" she replied, half-heartedly, rubbing gently at her stinging eyes. "It may sound strange, but I feel a bit down." She gave a slight chuckle at her self, scrubbing at her eyes a second time to prevent the tears that she felt welling there unbidden. "It's the end of an era. The end of a phase of my life…and even though I'm glad it's over, glad to be moving on, It's still a bit…" she shrugged and laughed at herself, unable to find the right words to explain how she felt.

"You're a weird one, Jack." Riddick sighed, shaking his head slightly and grinning at her when she scowled. He was supposed to be being sympathetic! "But I know what you mean."

Jack's frown softened and they lapsed into a comfortable silence for long minutes, subdued in their demeanour and thoughts. It was, indeed, the end of an era and Riddick understood the feeling of loss that Jack was experiencing. Something that had occupied her every living, breathing, waking moment and thought for so long, the desire to get even, to have justice exacted, that had kept her strong and alive all those years in Butcher's Bay had suddenly disappeared. Her quest fulfilled in one final, single act and the emptiness that she was feeling Riddick knew all too well…He had felt it after he had sealed Johns' fate back on that world…

Finally Riddick glanced back up at Jack, her eyes glazed over as she was lost in her thoughts. Her lips pursed together in deep contemplation and the barrenness that no doubt tugged in her chest. He smiled and tugged the goggles from her head, smoothing a hand through her beautiful, lengthening hair. She had been the one that had helped him to get over the loss of Johns, though Riddick had hated the man with a fierceness that he had never before felt for any of his victims. He hoped that he would be able to return Jack's gentle favour and ease her sense of loss the way that she had for him during those few months he had spent in New Mecca.

"So…" Jack said finally, her eyes clearing and focusing back onto Riddick's face, noticing the long, even strokes that his hands made through her hair and down her back. "Where are we going now?"

"Right now?" he queried with a voracious grin, leaning forwards and stealing nips and kisses at her neck and collar bones. He growled deep in his chest, the sound rumbling through Jack's entire body, making the tingle of excitement start in the pit of her stomach. "To bed."

Jack's growl of response was a mixture, somewhere between annoyance and pleasure. "You know what I meant, idiot!" she replied with a sharp intake of breath that only spurred him on. "Come on, Riddick!" she shoved him a little harder in the shoulder and he reluctantly pulled back, licking his lips to savour the taste of her skin and resting his hands palm down on the tops of her legs.

"Where do you want to go?" he asked with a frown of disappointment though he relented in his actions and Jack chuckled giving his clean shaven head a consoling rub. She sighed and her eyes wandered again to the hull directly behind Riddick's head as a sudden uncertainty traced it's way over her face.

"Come on, Jack, you can tell me if you wanna go somewhere. I got no where pressing I need to be…'cept with you."

Her fingers traced absentminded patterns on the back of his neck, almost making him shudder beneath her but instead he grinned and gave her a pretend cuff on her chin causing her to smile, though it was still filled with slight trepidation. Her eyes scanned his face again, staring deep into his pupils as if she could see the truth of his words in their silvery depths.

"I was thinking…" she began, removing a hand from around his neck to toy nervously with a strand of her hair. She glanced down, intent on watching as her finger curled and uncurled about that curl as if it were not her own, fascinated by it's movement almost. ""Maybe…maybe we could take a trip to Helion Prime? To New Mecca?" she paused, her incandescent orbs, that Riddick was finding increasingly easier to read with every passing day, flickering back up to his face to gage his reaction to her suggestion. What she saw was an impassive mask and her brows knit together in concern. "Please, Riddick. I want to know if they're safe. It's been eight years since I last saw them and I need to know that my sacrifice did at least a little good. For my own piece of mind." Riddick's reticence continued and he clamped his jaw together tightly, grinding his teeth into one another. Jack placed her right palm against his jaw, feeling the muscles working in austerity. "Please?" she begged again. "You don't even have to meet them again, if you don't want to. You can stay on the ship…"

"You know I don't stay very well." He mumbled in reply, not entirely thrilled with the prospect of meeting up with the man that had been supposed to protect Jack while he was away. The man who had failed miserably in that task. "I ain't gonna promise that I won't get angry though."

Jack's eyes widened with hope and from beneath the galvanized surface Riddick caught a glimmer of excitement, of untainted joy, and he knew that he was wrapped around her little finger.

"So? We can go?" she asked, holding her breath, barely able to force down her growing grin.

"Guess so…" Riddick replied and Jack hooted in delight, clamping her arms about his neck as if her life depended upon not letting go. "Jesus Christ, Jack! You tryin' to deafen me?" he growled, rubbing at his ringing ear with a wince and Jack swiftly relinquished her stranglehold on him and dismounted his knee and drawing a snarl of complaint from his lips. She moved towards the boarding ramp of 'The Bawdy Mistress' ignoring his protest entirely.

"Where are _you_ going?" he demanded watching as she paused and turned to glimpse him over her shoulder. "I ain't going to Helion Prime right this minute!"

"Me?" Jack queried with an innocent tone, pointing to herself, much as Riddick had done upon her first words to him when she had entered the hangar. "Right now?" she raised her eyebrows, stifling a chuckle as Riddick nodded, and her grin turned fiendish. "To bed." She replied flippantly and mounted the ramp, disappearing into the pitch black innards of the skiff.

Riddick remained still for a split second before pushing up from his seat atop the cargo crate. He wasn't going to turn down an offer like _that_!

The End.

-00000-

Thanks so much for all your comments, criticisms and all the time that you spent reading this for me! It's great to know that you liked my stuff and now I have a great feeling of closure. Jack and Riddick are in a good place, but with two mass murderers you know it can't stay like that for long. LOL! Any ideas that you have for where you would like to see a sequel go would be great. I'm considering it now but might give myself a little break for a while.

Thanks again!

Gem.

xxx


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